Magnificent Mumbai
Published: 14 September 2009
Pete Mathers travels to Mumbai to sample the city and its finest hotels.
Guest notice, pinned to the check-in desk, Heathrow, London:
‘Sorry to inform you that Jet Airways flight 9W-119 to Mumbai has been re-routed via Brussels due to Operational reasons as disruption caused out of Pilots agitation in India [sic].’
An inauspicious start to my trip to Mumbai, India’s financial powerhouse and its expanding centre of fashion, film and after-dark frolics. I hear something about a pilots’ strike, passengers left stranded in Brussels and a two-and-a-half-hour delay. Not good. Who did these pilots think they were?
"We would, however, be happy to upgrade you to Premier Class."
Excellent. Good on the pilots. A just cause no doubt. Long live the Indian tradition of non-violent protest. So long as I’ve longer in Jet Airways’ new Business Class cabin.
Seat 10A. I’d never sat so near the front of a plane - apart from hopping between islands in the South Pacific, where the pilot actually turned around and began handing out biscuits. We were way beyond biscuits here though - champagne after take-off, a decent-sized table with a real linen tablecloth, laid with salt and pepper grinders, a butter dish and finely polished glassware.
I perused the menu. Passing on the salad, I chose the cream of carrot soup followed by roasted seabass with artichoke puree, broad beans and sautéed baby potatoes. Dessert was Häagen-Dazs ice-cream - though the cheeseboard looked impressive too - washed down with a glass of 20-year-old port.
Now to test the entertainment. A screen swung out from the side of my egg-shaped cubicle. As you might expect, everything was on-demand - movies, television, music, games, news etc. - and operated by both remote control and touchscreen facilities. And the ‘noise-cancelling headphones’ you often read about in airline literature? Incredible - perfect sound quality without a hint of snoring man or crying baby.
Service was like that of a hotel. There was even a DND button - Do Not Disturb - on the panel of many buttons beside me. Most of these appeared to be designed to allow me to do yoga in my seat. At the push of a button I could change every angle available or enjoy a gently pulsating lower-back massage. And to make life easier, there was one button to take me straight to dead flat - marked ‘zzz’- and another to take me back to the required position for take-off and landing.
The only thing I can think to complain about is that the reading light was a little on the dim side. I had to use the TV screen to help illuminate my book: The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga, a story about India and the striking contrasts between its rich and its poor - surely a fitting preface for any trip to Mumbai?
"Namaste," said a bowing, smiling, sari-clad woman, her palms pressed together in front of her chest. "Namaste salutes the divine in you," she explained. It literally translates as "I bow to you".
It was the very early hours of the morning and I was standing in the lobby of The Leela Kempinski Mumbai, a magnificent 5-star hotel just a five-minute drive from the airport. Despite the hour I was surrounded by smiling attendants and shown to my room on the seventh floor.
Floors seven and eight are given over to Leela’s signature hotel-in-a-hotel, the Royal Club, where guests can take advantage of in-room check-in, a glass of champagne on arrival (even at two in the morning), a personal butler, a Bose sound system, flatscreen TV and 24-hour access to the Royal Club Lounge, whose buffet changes throughout the day and offers a selection of drinks and snacks, both sweet and savoury, Indian and international.
After a sleep, I set off in the morning in an air-conditioned car to see South Mumbai, accompanied by driver Hamid, a born-and-bred Mumbaikar; my guide and self-appointed spiritual advisor, Mala Bangera; and Leela’s PR & Corporate Communications Manager, Debasmita Majumder.
Like a tree that adds rings for each year of its growth, Mumbai has grown organically, adding layer upon layer of people, construction and culture. Beneath the glistening skyscrapers, architectural highlights and urban shopping malls that have mushroomed amid slums and grinding poverty lies a cluster of seven islands, once populated only by Koli fisherfolk and bloated mosquitoes (the latter of which now seem to have disappeared).
It wasn’t until the 16th century that the Portuguese made the islands an important part of their maritime trade network, and not until 1661 that they were given to King Charles II as part of the dowry for his marriage to the Portuguese princess. In 1668, Charles leased the land to the British East India Company and expansion has followed ever since, filling in the sea and reclaiming land until the original islands were just districts in the world’s second-most-populous city.
South Mumbai - known to locals as just Town - is home to most of the main sites and a guided city tour is the best way to see them. To reach the south took about an hour by car and meant crossing the impressive Bandra Worli Sea Link, a newly opened four-lane (eight when it’s completed) cable-stayed bridge linking the western suburbs with central Mumbai.
"Thanks to the bridge," explained Hamid, "what once took up to an hour can be done in seven minutes."
Our first stop was the Dhobi Ghat, the world’s largest outdoor laundry. According to Mala, around 90% of the city employ dhobis (washers) to clean their clothes in open-air concrete wash pens. Once dunked in hot water to loosen the dirt, clothes are flogged against blocks of black basalt, scrubbed on tables, rinsed, hung on the rooftops to dry and taken to the shanties to be pressed by coal-powered irons. A week later they’re returned, and "never," says Mala, "are clothes lost or damaged, despite the dhobis complete lack of literacy".
Next was the startlingly decorative Jain temple, built in 1904. Though the peace-loving Jains take great pains to avoid killing even the tiniest organisms (they refrain, for example, from eating root vegetables so as not to risk dicing an earthworm while digging them up), they’re ferocious when it comes to business. They make up less than 4% of the Mumbai population yet contribute about 25% of its income tax. Much of their wealth is poured into their places of worship. The entrance here was flanked by two stone elephants, the dome ceiling was beautifully painted with signs of the zodiac, heavy doors were gilded in silver and the marble statues of revered deities were adorned with bejewelled headdresses and the floral garlands of temple worshippers.
Tearing myself away from the unguarded silverware, I began to get the feeling that I was somehow back in Blighty. The British influence is everywhere. The UNESCO-listed Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus bears more than a passing resemblance to St Pancras, the University of Mumbai looks like an Oxford college with palm trees and the adjoining Rajabai Clock Tower was clearly based on Big Ben.
On other landmarks the lines have been blurred. The Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, or Prince of Wales Museum, sports domes of Mughal design above balconies and a façade that are typically British. The National Museum of Modern Art is more French Renaissance, while the Regal cinema opposite, the first in India to have air conditioning, is classic Art Deco.
Most of the above can be seen from the Regal Circle at the bottom of Colaba Causeway, Mumbai’s equivalent of Oxford Street. On one side of the street I found T-shirts, pipes, clocks, scales, faux-leather bags and religious statuettes, all available to the able haggler. On the other the shops were air-conditioned and the quality of hand-woven carpets and saris unquestionable. The store I was led to proudly boasted a photo of its most famous patron, former US president Bill Clinton. Unlike the stalls across the street, goods here had a fixed price, but I couldn’t escape the feeling that they were milking their celebrity status.
Resisting the urge to buy a shining brass gramophone or postcard-sized copy of the Kama Sutra, I headed back to The Leela. Lying in wait was a sumptuous Chinese feast served in The Great Wall, one of several of The Leela’s sensational restaurants. Staring out the window at the picturesque garden, I knew I should head to bed. Tomorrow promises yet another early start, and if I’m to enter the ‘Thieves’ Market’ I shall need my wits about me.
Back in the car and competing for space on the log-jammed roads with a hundred auto rickshaws, my attention was brought to a breadcrumb trail of limes and green chillies. At almost every road junction I saw them grouped together with pieces of charcoal, fastened with strands of wire. This, explained Mala, was for luck. The bundles were made by entrepreneurial souls and sold at the roadside. The catch was that should you be unfortunate enough to stand on one, the bad luck they absorbed would be transferred to you.
“If you don’t like your mother-in-law you can leave one in front of her,” chuckled Mala.
As good natured as her joke was, its implementation would unquestionably cause friction in the Hindu joint family structure, still common in communities as progressive as Mumbai’s. The system requires paternally related generations to live together under one roof – working, worshipping and eating communally – and is responsible, so I was told, for the close social ties and low rates of divorce across India today.
While all male members are blood relatives, the women are either mothers, wives, unmarried daughters or widowed relatives. So should you upset your mother-in-law, by say condemning her to a spell of bad luck, you’d better come up with something to make amends quick.
A good place to start would be a basket of fruit from where I headed next, Crawford Market. Built in 1869, Crawford Market was Mumbai’s first municipal market, selling fresh fruit, vegetables, spices, meat and live animals. Besides the arrival of electricity – it was the first of the city’s buildings to be plugged in – little has changed, though thanks to the slashing of import tariffs, the presence of foreign food stuffs has been slowly on the rise.
You can now, for example, fill your mother-in-law’s basket with Washington apples and California plums as well as Indian favourites such as Maharasthtrian mangoes and delicious custard apples.
Also of interest were two elaborate fountains, around whose Victorian features were stacked the limited possessions of several stall holders. More than just a place of work, the market has become home to many of its traders. I wondered, however, if these men knew that the fountains they slept around were built by a Mr J Lockwood Kipling, the father of Rudyard.
Almost as old as Crawford Market is the history of Mumbai’s dabbawalas, thousands of semi-literate men who deliver close to 200,000 hot, home-cooked lunches to businesses and schools around the city in a matter of hours. Every morning at nine, the homemade meals are picked up in Tiffin boxes, either from clients’ homes – the meals being made by the client’s wife – or from other women’s houses who cook lunches to order for a monthly fee. The boxes are loaded onto trolleys and pushed to a railway station where they’re taken by train to an unloading point. They’re then sorted so that all those going to similar destinations, indicated by a system of coloured lettering, end up on the same trolley or bicycle and are delivered to the right address. According to Forbes magazine, they make only one mistake in every eight million deliveries!
Surely, I thought, as we in the West spiral towards technological dependency, there is something to learn from this document-free, Microsoft-ignorant yet highly efficient system.
“Are you proud,” I asked of a group of young dabbawalas, dressed in white cloth hats, light trousers and cotton shirts, “to be part of such a long and well regarded profession?”
“Not really,” they admitted. “There’s not enough money for the strain that it puts on our bodies. The trolleys weigh 100 kilos and we work six days a week. We want our sons to go to school, to learn to read and write and get a better-paid job. For us it’s too late to do anything else. Our sons want to work in a call centre. They’re used to city life. They’d never do what we do.”
My naivety had caught up with me. Yes, what they did was impressive, but who’d envy them their work. Their office was the streets of Mumbai, choked with car fumes and cast into shadow by the unrelenting rise of concrete tower blocks, where middle class Mumbaikars provide technical support and out-of-hours assistance for offices in far-flung Western cities.
I thanked them for talking to me and paid them for their trouble, but I wasn’t quite ready to give up on my notions of well preserved traditions. I headed to the Chor Bazaar, the ‘Thieves’ Market’, a place once notorious for fencing stolen goods. Today it’s more a warren of respectable stores peddling antiques and assorted bric-a-brac, but its mountains of clutter and darkened corners retain an air of cloak-and-dagger romance.
It’s a place I could wander for hours. Elaborately carved cupboards, ships’ wheels and Bollywood posters. Bakelite phones and Mercedes Benz badges. Statues of Christian knights, casts of Hindu deities and a marble Roman goddess. Rolex and Omega. Ancient coins and strands of luminous pasta. The Chor Bazaar is the Aladdin’s Cave of Mumbai and will restore your faith in the weird and the wonderful.
I arrived back at The Leela exhausted, hoping for a chance to relax. I needn’t have worried. My gracious hosts had booked me a treatment at their luxurious new spa. After a steam and a sauna I was shown to my treatment room. What followed was an hour of blissful aromatherapy massage. Relaxed, cleansed, balanced and purified I left to get ready for dinner, a personalised menu at Jamavar restaurant – Indian cuisine at its absolute best.
By nine o’clock this morning I was standing beneath the Gateway of India, the towering basalt archway looking out across Mumbai Harbour. It was built by the British to commemorate the 1911 royal visit of King George V, the only reigning British monarch to ever visit the jewel in the Empire’s crown. Ironically, it was also through this arch that in 1948 the final British troops marched before boarding their ships and leaving India to its hard-won independence.
Next to it stands the sumptuous Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, another of Mumbai’s most photographed landmarks. The fairytale building of Islamic and Renaissance style was built in 1903 by Parsi industrialist JN Tata, supposedly after he was refused entry to the European-only Pyrke’s Apollo Hotel, on the grounds of being ‘a native’. More recently the Taj was the tragic focal point of last November’s Mumbai attacks, but when I nosed inside to sneak a peak at its alabaster vaulted ceilings and graceful onyx columns, it was clear that it was very much business as usual.
My reason for being at the Gateway in the first place was to catch the first ferry to Elephanta Island, about seven miles offshore. The trip took about an hour but was more than worth the effort. Somewhere around the 7th century AD, a ruling prince of western and southern India ordered the carving of an elaborate cave temple in honour of the multi-faceted god Shiva. Carved into the basalt rock of the island, the cave’s artwork is said to represent some of the most impressive temple carving in all of India, and I could well believe it.
Huffing and puffing at the top of 128 steps, lined on both sides by eager stall holders – the T-shirts were my favourites: Hari Potter; Gandhi - they don’t make ’em like him any more; and under a picture of the Taj Mahal, Via Agra - man’s greatest erection for a woman – I reached the cave’s triple-bayed entrance. Inside is a giant hallway, supported by ornate pillars and surrounded by exquisitely carved sculptures, allegorical depictions of the life of Lord Shiva. The magnum opus is a full-relief bust, about 20 feet high, of the three-faced Sadashiva (‘Eternal Shiva’). The left-hand face is one of vengeance and anger; the right-hand that of Uma, or Vamadeva, the feminine side of this complex god; while the central face, eyes closed, is an image of serene contemplation.
I can’t imagine anyone failing to be moved by the craftsmanship and dedication shown at Elephanta. Yet somehow, in a display of mind-boggling disrespect, the Portuguese thought it fitting to use the caves as a firing range, causing irreparable damage to many of the sculptures. Another feather in the cap of colonial self-importance.
Back on the mainland, I took a stroll along Chowpatty Beach, at the northern end of the seafront promenade that traces Marine Drive, a two-mile, palm-fringed arc sweeping along the western bay from the business district of Nariman Point to the wealthy enclave of Malabar Hill. The beach itself, though not exactly suitable for swimming, was a hub of activity. Teenage boys roasted peanuts and corn-on-the-cob. Others sold chai or played cricket using driftwood stumps and a two-by-four. Couples canoodled under brightly coloured parasols and on either side stood the Art Deco homes and glistening offices of many of the city’s wealthiest residents.
My final stop was one that I was keen not to miss. My trip coincided with the opening day of the Mount Mary Fair, held in the Mumbai suburb of Bandra. The first thing to understand is that the Western understanding of the word ‘suburb’ has no place in Mumbai. There are no lawns and backyards, no well-tended semis in quaint little cul-de-sacs, no Neighbourhood Watch and no Young Conservatives. The suburbs are merely an extension of the city, where architecture is less interested in form than in function.
Bandra, however, has recently morphed into Mumbai’s hottest area, home to Bollywood stars, an assortment of restaurants and the Basilica of Mount Mary. Near the start of September, to commemorate the birth of Mother Mary, this church on a hill attracts thousands of devotees from all across the city.
With police directing the traffic, we inched our way through Bandra towards the small peninsula of Land’s End and what’s left of the Portuguese-built Bandra Fort (the church itself had been cut off to cars). Every street was a seething mass of multi-faith pilgrims and curious onlookers. Stalls along the roadside sold wax offerings of various design, depending on the problem you sought help in resolving - body parts for the sick and the suffering, houses for those seeking accommodation, babies for those hoping to conceive and aeroplanes for those dreaming of foreign climes.
I’d wanted to reach Bandra Fort as its waterfront position seemed the perfect spot to watch the sunset. On the rocks below, teenagers had gathered in groups, competing for attention. A group of boys soon crowded around me, dressed in jeans, trainers, shirts and T-shirts, their hair still wet from a sunset swim. They laughed and smiled, trying to read my notes and standing arm-in-arm, the way same-sex friends find inherently comfortably almost everywhere but the West. Before long I was the star in a half dozen photos, taken on their Nokia camera phones.
It was a wonderful welcome, and typical of everyone I’d met in Mumbai, from the dabbawalas delivering food around the city, to the salesmen of Crawford Market and Chor Bazaar, to the wonderful staff of The Leela Kempinski, whose faultless hospitality and unending ability to exceed my expectations had brought the trip together.
If ever you are thinking of visiting India, a few days in Mumbai should be fixed in your itinerary, with The Leela Kempinski as your hotel of choice.
Editor: Pete Mathers
Go back
Back to the top
